The role of translation in different language learning approaches has varied greatly over the last few centuries – from unquestioned (mis) use in the grammar-translation method to a (near) total ban in direct and audiolingual methods. The aftermath was a widespread suspicion of the usefulness of translation in mainstream second language learning research circles. In this text, we argued for reconsidering the assumption that there is no place for de learners first language in language learning. Far from being an obstacle to learning a foreign language, the LI (First language) is a useful resource on which learners can draw to ease their way to a more secure knowledge of and proficiency in the foreign language. The common educational tenet of linking new knowledge with what learners already know can be interpreted in the context of foreign language learning as involving a bilingualization process in which the LI and translation play an active part. For this new role, translation needs to be reconceptualized as a helpful instrument, contributing to communicative competence in the foreign language, to linguistic-cultural awareness, and to cognitive and conscious learning as well as cross-cultural understanding.

Using translation as an aid to communicative competence and as a powerful consciousness-raising procedure in the sense suggested in this chapter might, paradoxically, counteract interference from the mother tongue-the very reversal of the strongest argument against translation in the past.

In, House, J. (2009). Translation. Series Editor H.G.Widdowson.